IN THE EARTH

IN THE EARTH is a bizarre horror movie about a young scientist and his female guide who venture into a forest to locate the man’s scientist friend who’s working alone at an isolated outpost, only to encounter a strange, deranged man who holds them captive. Just when the story of IN THE EARTH, which has some gruesome violence and lots of foul language, starts to get interesting, the third act devolves into confusing, mystical visions fueled by mushrooms spewing clouds of hallucinogenic mist and doesn’t resolve anything.

IN THE EARTH opens in a forest outside Bristol, England, which has been hit with a COVID-like virus. The young scientist, Martin Lowery, walks to a large, isolated cabin. There, a scientific team is helping Martin’s former colleague and ex-lover, Dr. Olivia Wendle. Wendle is studying something called mycorrhiza in the forest, which may be able to increase crop efficiency. The movie never explains this to viewers, but mycorrhiza is the symbiotic relationship between fungi, large and small, with green plants. Plants can supply sugars to a fungus while a fungus supplies water and nutrients from the soil to plants.

Olivia has set up a camp two days’ walking distance from the cabin, but the scientific team at the cabin hasn’t heard from Olivia in several months. They provide Martin with a female guide named Alma to lead him to Olivia’s camp. Before they depart, Martin sees there’s a large lithograph on a wall depicting some kind of complicated pagan ritual. Alma explains to him that the lithograph refers to a local legend of a female woodland spirit called Parnag Fegg.

While walking to Olivia’s camp, Martin and Alma find an abandoned campsite. Then, that night, while sleeping in their small separate tents, they’re attack by two people and their shoes are stolen. They decide to continue making their way to the camp, but Martin badly cuts his left foot.

Martin and Alma think they are fortunate when a bearded man named Zach, who’s living in the forest, offers them shoes, food and drink, and cleans and stiches Martin’s foot. However, the “tea” he offers them contains a sedative. So, they fall asleep, and when they start to wake up, they find themselves tied to two chairs.

Zach keeps them sedated, however, and starts dragging their bodies outside his large tent to take ritualistic photos of them and himself in white paper costumes. Using animal guts, he also stitches a strange symbol into one of Martin’s arms.

When Zach finally lets them wake up, Zach tells Martin that the symbol on his arm is a sign to the powerful sorcerer who controls the forest and its plant-fungal system and who placed his essence into a pagan standing stone somewhere in the forest. He tells them Olivia doesn’t understand anything about this spirit and is trying to use science instead of art and religion to communicate with it.

Gruesomely, Zach decides that Martin’s foot is too infected, and he needs to cut off a couple of Martin’s toes. Of course, Martin demands to be taken to the hospital, but Zach claims Martin would die before they get there. So, in a comically gruesome scene, he takes two tries to chop off Martin’s two smallest toes and bandages up the bloody wound.

Zach starts to prepare another kind of pagan ritual for Martin to endure. While doing so, however, he accidentally drops a sharp instrument and doesn’t notice. As Zach drags Martin outside the tent to perform his new ritual, which may involve sacrificing Martin, Alma uses the sharp instrument to get loose and knock Zach unconscious.

Alma and Martin decide to make their way separately to Olivia’s camp. Zach, however, is soon hot on their trail. Alma is able to draw Zach away from Martin, and she eventually eludes Zach, who’s carrying his ax and a bow and arrow.

Martin and Alma finally make it to Olivia’s camp separately. They find that Olivia uses an electronic board at the camp to control large lights and speakers in the woods to try to communicate with whatever is controlling the forest. She thinks the whole forest is connected by the symbiotic plant-fungus system, or mycorrhiza. She also tells them that the words Parnag Fegg originally just meant light and sound, so that’s why she’s using the lights and speaker system. Martin and Alma also find, however, that Olivia has set up her camp next to the pagan standing stone that Zach said the sorcerer used.

Martin and Alma are afraid that Zach will eventually make his way to Olivia’s camp and attack them. So, naturally, they want to leave as soon as possible. However, just as they start thinking this, all the mushrooms in the forest start releasing a mist that surrounds the camp and prevents them from leaving.

The story in IN THE EARTH starts to get interesting when Zach tells Martin and Alma about his philosophical differences with Martin’s former colleague, Dr. Olivia Wendle. However, nothing is resolved in the end. For example, Olivia talks about trying to communicate with the system or force that’s controlling the forest, but no real communication occurs at the end. In fact, the story just devolves into confusing, mystical, nonsensical visions fueled by mushrooms spewing clouds of hallucinogenic mist. The visions are indecipherable. No spirit reveals itself, no answers are revealed, and the forest and its strange machinations remain hazy.

Not only does IN THE EARTH seem like a waste of time; it also contains some very strong gruesome violence. It’s not the most gruesome violence you’ll ever see these days in movies, but it’s excessive enough. The movie also has some “f” words, two strong Jesus profanities and many light profanities. However, ultimately, it’s the false pagan worldview, mystical religion and occult references that make IN THE EARTH abhorrent and unacceptable.